Wendy
by KitKatt0430
Summary: Wendy goes to Neverland to escape her parent's expectations but learns that, perhaps, growing up will be the real escape after all. (Lesbian Wendy Darling)


Summary: Wendy goes to Neverland to escape her parent's expectations but learns that, perhaps, growing up will be the real escape after all.

Notes: Vaguely 50s/60s setting, PoC Wendy, Lesbian Wendy

_**Wendy**_

Wendy Darling did not want to grow up.

Her parents had expectations for her; raised her on a diet of stories about true love and the constant reminders that girls were supposed to fall in love with boys. Girls wore dresses and skirts and let the boys have all the fun. Girls were the damsels in distress and the boys were their heroes.

If Wendy was being perfectly honest, flying out the window with Peter had been as much an attempt to escape her parents expectations as it was an attempt to conform to them.

She used to tell stories to her little brothers at night about a heroic young woman, talented with a sword, who went around rescuing other women and defeating boastful men in sword fights. Sometimes Wendy was even so daring as to have her protagonist kiss another girl on the cheek. But it wasn't just John and Michael who heard Wendy's stories.

Hovering outside their window to eavesdrop, Peter Pan had listened too. And when he offered to take her away to Neverland one evening, after her father had caught Wendy writing a poem about a beautiful girl at school and slapped her for it...

Here was a boy offering Wendy salvation. Freedom. Rescue.

In some ways, coming to Neverland, choosing to be like Peter Pan, was Wendy's ideal dream come true. Neverland made people forget and at first Wendy had been certain she could let her confused emotions about Aimee go and free herself from the feeling of betrayal that had hit her harder than the sting of her father's palm against her face.

She didn't have to wear skirts there. In backward Neverland, Wendy can wear pants all she wants and her parents aren't there to complain. She can pick up knives and fight pirates and be the heroine of her own story. No one to tell her that she had to straighten her hair to fit in with people who'd never accept her skin color anyway. The Lost Boys come in all types, so they don't care what she looks like... though they won't stop reminding her that she's a girl.

Peter Pan and Tinkerbell may have brought her here but Wendy is the one who made the choice to say yes, and that moment of breathless, impulsive courage has blossomed into the quiet certainty that her agency is her own.

The day she meets Tiger Lily, who reminds Wendy so much of the beautiful Aimee from school, reminds Wendy that she likes to look pretty and attractive sometimes. Wendy can't bring herself to forget her troubles back home entirely, but here she's free to spend all the time with Tiger Lily she likes. Better still, Tiger lily thought Wendy's natural hair was beautiful, closely admiring the curls that flowed all around Wendy's face and shoulders. The two of them fell in together, thick as thieves near instantly and Wendy found herself watching the other girl's mouth too closely, wondering what her lips might taste like and fearing the consequences of finding out.

Just like at home, though, there was someone who didn't like where Wendy's attention landed.

Peter, it seemed, was the jealous type. The entitled type. He'd wanted Wendy to tell stories to the Lost Boys and play mother to his father. He didn't like her fighting pirates, didn't like the way she didn't listen to him or hang on his every word. He'd thought she'd settle down once she had a taste of what real danger was like.

The Lost Boys were obedient to him, so why couldn't she just listen?

Surrounded by all those Lost Boys, Wendy found herself in a different kind of hell. She never wanted to be a mother. And she most certainly never wanted to be any man's wife.

But rejecting Peter meant rejecting Neverland and Wendy found herself waking up in bed alone, sun shining through her window and her mother making breakfast in the kitchen down the hall. Her brothers already awake, gathering their things for school.

Maybe Neverland was never anything more than a dream, but the important bits lingered and, perhaps, in choosing to reject her childhood dreams... Wendy had grown up a little in spite of herself.

Gazing at Aimee in class that day, Wendy knows with certainty that no boy could ever compare to the sunny smile of a pretty girl. Especially not Aimee's smile. The same courage that had sent Wendy leaping out a window after Peter now emboldens her once more. Passed in a note when the teacher isn't looking, Wendy asks Aimee to meet her after school.

Kissing Aimee behind the bleachers makes Wendy's heart soar in a way no amount pixie dust could ever compare.

Wendy could cope with growing up after all, it seemed. Perhaps... perhaps growing up didn't have to mean giving in to what her parents wanted. It could mean subverting their expectations instead.

It could mean lingering kisses and writing poems for the pretty girl who made her heart flutter and taking solace in knowing that, one day, her parents would no longer be in the position of telling her what to do or who to love.


End file.
